03 August 2009

The St. George Utah Temple is the first temple completed by the Mormons in Utah. Brigham Young was there at the groundbreaking in 1871 and at the 1877 dedication.

The street was just some residential street I was on in St. George. I was struck by how wide it was. It is at least as wide as 116th St. outside my window and probably gets as much traffic in a year as 116th gets in a typical day.

29 July 2009

While I enjoyed the many motel signs in southern Utah, I had much ground to cover before settling down for the evening. The settling down took place at the Sands Motel in St. George.

The room was only $29.95!

You get what you pay for!

The room was quiet and clean. WiFi was free! The dresser was a good 40-50 years old, missing a drawer, and had LA gang graffiti carved into its side. More importantly, it gets cold at night in the desert. The bed had sheets and a very thin blanket.

The heat came from an enormous, loud, and ancient forced air heat/AC unit stuck in the window of the odd walk-in closet area. The heater had two settings: Off, and 100 miles/hour, 100 degree Santa Ana winds. I couldn't decide which was the worse alternative, freezing or becoming dessicated, so I alternated between the two that night. Still, $29.95 can't be beat.

28 July 2009

26 July 2009

Classic geology! Checkerboard Mesa is on the eastern end of Zion Canyon National Park. The mesa is essentially a calcified sand dune. The horizontal layers show how the sand was laid down some 200 million years ago before calcium carbonate solidified the whole thing. The vertical joints are caused by freezing and thawing of water.

14 July 2009

Since Springdale is far from most city lights and at an elevation of 3900 feet I figured I might be able to get a couple of good star pictures. The camera was limited to thirty seconds of exposure time because I don't have a cable release so the pictures didn't come out as bright as I'd like. Still, there's a lot more stars than I can see looking out my Manhattan window.

13 July 2009

Because of highway construction I drove through a lot more of Las Vegas than I cared to on my way to Zion Canyon National Park. The delay meant I didn't get to Springdale until nearly sunset. Too late to go into the park but just in time to take in Coraline in 3-D at the giant screen movie theater next to the park entrance.

The next day I drove up the canyon and back, stopping several times to go on a hike. Late March was an excellent time to visit. There weren't many people in the park, the trees were just getting leaves, the daytime temperature was comfortable (it did get below freezing and snow at higher elevations one night) and it was the last weekend of winter that cars are allowed to drive up the canyon. Once the high season begins cars are banned and you have to take a bus, bike or walk.

I took about a zillion photos in the park. Every few minutes I'd stop, say "That's so beautiful" or "Wow, look at that" and take a picture. When you boil it down though, I probably took a dozen pictures a hundred times each.

13 April 2009

I'm getting out of sequence here, but the cover story yesterday's New York Times travel section was about southern Utah. Why didn't it come out before I went on the trip?

One photo included with the article was of the Parry Lodge, where lots of actors stayed when filming in Kanab. The photo looked very familiar, as I had taken an almost identical picture. The article is correct in saying there are plaques commemorating the stars that have filmed in Kanab. Among those stars were Don Knotts and Tim Conway, who filmed not The Apple Dumpling Gang but its sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, here in 1979.